Univ. charging $100/mo./person for mainframe access

[Donald A. Lehn, Ph.D.]

In article <3j0qqc$8rc at news.doit.wisc.edu>, mtkloth at students.wisc.edu 
says...
>
>gold at astro.ocis.temple.edu (Bert Gold) wrote:
>>
>> One of the universities where I work has decided to charge $ 100 per
>> person per month for mainframe access.  As everyone in these newsgroups
>> knows, this kind of access is an absolute requirement for doing
>> molecular biology in 1995!
>
>The University of Wisconsin in Madison not only does not charge, but it 
>has been encouraging all of the students and faculty to make use of email
>and other internet tools.  I think that it has been an enourmous help
>to have these tools available.

You are right.  Internet access is a must.  If the UW started to charge
$100.00/month I'd tell them to screw themselves since there are many
local net providers who will give you unlimited slip access for about
a third to a quarter of this amount.

I would encourage you to drop a note to NIH about this.  I bet your
university is already billing computer access to internet as an
"overhead" expense for grants it administers.  I am willing to bet that
the govt. wouldn't take kindly to paying for something that isn't
delivered.

Don

ps. A friend of mine who keeps track of such things estimates that
the real cost of providing internet services to everyone on the
net runs less than a $1.00/month (actually more like 50 cents/month).

-- 
Donald A. Lehn, Ph.D.                   Phone:  (608) 263-7668
Medical Sciences Center / 3415          Fax:    (608) 262-9300
University of Wisconsin Medical School  Email:  dalehn at facstaff.wisc.edu
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